My Blog

Bill Graeser, a Long Island native, has worked as dairy farmer, carpenter, teacher of Transcendental Meditation and is currently the Locksmith at Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa. Published in “North American Review,” “Michigan Avenue Review,” “Lyrical Iowa,” “Chiron Review,” the “Long Island Quarterly” and “This Enduring Gift.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Corn

 

Your syrup is everywhere—

in soda, tomato sauce, straw-

berry jam, and in the blood

and bodies of those who feast

round-bellied from super-

market shelves.

 

But a poem is not made from

corn syrup, but from fields

sown with sunlight

where roots follow the religion

of rain, the sacrament of soil,

 

and if corn could speak

it would say—“Stand with us

here, stretch out your arms

in the Sun...

and tomorrow we'll laugh

in the rain.”

 

 

 

 

Stupid Hole

 

Are you in Stupid Hole?

I hope not.

Which unlike chipmunk

or snake hole is not in

the ground but in the head.

 

From where one looks out

and does not see what is there

but something else, something

misconstrued by the dark

behind the eye.

 

Then there are those who promote

Stupid Hole—erect a flag

beside it, offer free beer,

and there are those who say:

“Come out, look around,

 

that is the sky, this the blissful

Sun, and so what

if the last thing we want

is free beer.”

 

 

 

 

 

Water

 

We who turn the faucet,

who flush, know less

what water is.

 

Who cross the bridge

by the factory

in cars and trucks,

 

who carry an umbrella

when even a single

cloud.

 

We are the ones

 

who need sit in the rain,

bathe in the river,

haul buckets from the well

 

that we, like the lake,

know water.